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Redeeming Justice
From Defendant to Defender, My Fight for Equity on Both Sides of a Broken System
1 of 1 copy available
“A daring act of justified defiance.”—SHAKA SENGHOR
“Nothing less than heroic.”—JOHN GRISHAM
He was seventeen when an all-white jury sentenced him to prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Now a pioneering lawyer, he recalls the journey that led to his exoneration—and inspired him to devote his life to fighting the many injustices in our legal system.
Seventeen years old and facing nearly thirty years behind bars, Jarrett Adams sought to figure out the why behind his fate. Sustained by his mother and aunts who brought him back from the edge of despair through letters of prayer and encouragement, Adams became obsessed with our legal system in all its damaged glory. After studying how his constitutional rights to effective counsel had been violated, he solicited the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, an organization that exonerates the wrongfully convicted, and won his release after nearly ten years in prison.
But the journey was far from over. Adams took the lessons he learned through his incarceration and worked his way through law school with the goal of helping those who, like himself, had faced our legal system at its worst. After earning his law degree, he worked with the New York Innocence Project, becoming the first exoneree ever hired by the nonprofit as a lawyer. In his first case with the Innocence Project, he argued before the same court that had convicted him a decade earlier—and won.
In this illuminating story of hope and full-circle redemption, Adams draws on his life and the cases of his clients to show the racist tactics used to convict young men of color, the unique challenges facing exonerees once released, and how the lack of equal representation in our courts is a failure not only of empathy but of our collective ability to uncover the truth. Redeeming Justice is an unforgettable firsthand account of the limits—and possibilities—of our country’s system of law.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
September 14, 2021 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593137826
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593137826
- File size: 2480 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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August 1, 2021
During the summer after high-school graduation, Adams and two friends went to a lot of parties. One of those nights out led to Adams' arrest, extradition, conviction, and incarceration for a crime neither he nor his friends committed. Adams begins his memoir with his wrongful conviction and ends with him starting his own law practice. The road there is long and dehumanizing and includes an inept public defender, systemic racism, and nearly 10 years in prison on false charges. Adams resists creating normalcy while in prison. Instead, he spends hours in the law library educating himself and using his knowledge to help himself and other inmates. His successes inspire him to become an attorney in order to help others facing injustice within our justice system. Adams' release is a relief, but he must navigate a changed world while dealing with trauma and financial struggle. His story of education, the lifesaving work of innocence projects, and exoneration, combined with his drive and skill, becomes a powerful tool in his ongoing fight to be a positive force within a racist and broken system.COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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September 1, 2021
Attorney Adams recounts his case of racist-driven injustice, a decade of hard time, and the long road to a new life. This is a story about being wrongly accused of a crime because the alleged perpetrator was Black. In 1998, the author, then 18, was convicted of rape. Being Black and on trial was one strike, and then there were two more: Adams believed the truth would prevail (sadly, not the case), and his court-appointed lawyer got paid by the number of cases he closed, thus assuring little digging in the case. The author was sentenced to 28 years behind bars, going to some of the harshest prisons in the country, where he spent years in solitary confinement. Adams brings to his story flinch-making detail, evoking a fever dream of fear and confusion. In his cast of prison characters, there are both those who dehumanize and the ones who help you make it through. For his safety and sanity, Adams found work in the prison legal library, and in something straight out of Shawshank Redemption, he became the in-house legal adviser to those who were unjustly incarcerated, given poor legal counsel, and written up with phony disciplinary tickets. It is a remarkable tale of chance, circumstance, mind-boggling dedication, racism, survival, faith ("I go first because I look for any reason to get out of my cell. Then I realize I'm going to church because I feel emotionally and physically safe"), and admirable forbearance. There is rarely a minute when readers will not want to know what comes next, from prison to lawyering and fighting for not aspirational but equal justice, to how Adams handles each instance of anger, anxiety, guilt, and willpower in and out of prison. A consuming tale of a broken legal system, its trail of ruin, and the fortitude needed to overcome its scarring.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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December 1, 2021
Convicted by an all-white jury at age 17 of a crime he didn't commit and finally exonerated with the help of the Wisconsin Innocence Project after multiple appeals and 10 years in prison, Adams subsequently earned a Juris Doctorate from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He argued his first case with the Innocence Project, standing before the same court that had convicted him years previously.
Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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